May 09, 2017

Le Four Step Schottisch

Winding up my little schottische mini-series, I have a simple little variation found, as far as I can tell, only in George Washington Lopp's La Danse (Paris, 1903). Le Four Step Schottische is composed solely of -- you guessed it -- sequences of four steps (walking or slide-close-slide-closing) and turning two-steps. This is schottische deconstructed to the point of having almost completely lost any distinctive characteristics of the dance, foreshadowing the simple schottisches of the ragtime era. The variation itself is negligible, but fitting it in among related schottisches of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century is interesting.

But first, how to do it:

The dancers begin in a regular ballroom hold, both turned slightly outwards to face along line of dance. The gentleman begins with the left foot and the lady with the right.

Le Four Step Schottisch (four bars)1b Four steps forward along line of dance1b One complete turn of two-step1b Slide lead foot sideways along line of dance; close trailing foot to 1st; slide lead foot again; close trailing foot to 5th1b One complete turn of two-step

Most of Lopp's schottische are given a metronome count of 72, but Le Four Step gets a brisk 84, presumably because its steps are so simple that it is easy to dance quickly. In the general theory of turning couple dances, one could reverse the direction of the turning two-steps.

This schottische looks like quite the outlier, but it's actually a fairly logical development within schottische's evolution in the last two decades of the nineteenth century and first two decades of the twentieth.

Some context:

1. Rhythm pattern. Turning two-steps have been part of the schottische since its earliest days. Earlier schottisches follow, with some variation, a simple AABB pattern: two measures without turning, followed by two measures of turn, with the turning being either leap-hops (or step-hops) or galop/deux temps steps which by century's end would be simply called the two-step. The rhythm of the deux temps version is:

1-2-3-4 1-2-3-4 1&2 3&4 1&2 3&4

Le Four Step rearranges this to a pattern of no turn/turn/no turn/turn:

1-2-3-4 1&2 3&4 1-2-3-4 1&2 3&4

The alternating pattern means that Le Four Step lacks the change of lead foot of the earlier schottische, and the leaps and cuts of the liveliest descriptions have disappeared, the latter being typical of the evolution of couple dances in the transition into the ragtime era.

2. One-way-only sideways motion (no back and forth). The most common pattern of the first part of the early schottische was a sideways slide-cut-leap-hop or slide-close-slide-hop on the lead foot, followed by reversing it on the second foot, usually (but not always) without turning. Replace the hop with a close of the feet and you lose the opportunity to change lead foot. One-way-only sideways slide-close-slide-close patterns are found in many late nineteenth century American schottisches; examples include the Gavotte and the similar grapevine sequence (side-cross-side-cross) of the Loomis New Gavotte, though both of those followed the standard pattern of two 4/4 measures without turning followed by two of turning. English dancing master William Lamb may have been on to something at the turn of the century when he included the slide-close-slide-close sequence in what he called as the "American" schottische!

3. Just walking. I suspect this is influenced by the march steps which were often incorporated into the two-step (see, for example, the four march steps in Albert Newman's Military Two-Step or the walk-walk-point-tuck of the Klondike Two-Step). Le Four Step blurs the boundaries between a two-step and a schottische (it would work just as well to two-step music), so it makes perfect sense for march steps to have leaked in.

The elements of Le Four Step precisely foreshadow those of the Pan-American Glide, a 1910s schottische which has all the same elements in a slightly different combination:

All of the above-referenced schottisches are American in origin, but there was plenty of choreographic commerce between America and Europe at the time, with American influence spreading eastward across the Atlantic. Lopp himself was an American expatriate who translated numerous American variations (many cribbed directly from Maine dancing master M. B. Gilbert's 1890 tome Round Dancing) into French for La Danse.